Bethesda Using New Engine for Elder Scrolls V

From The Elder Scrolls IV to Fallout 3 and now Fallout: New Vegas, the Gamebryo engine has been a workhorse for Bethesda. That said, it’s definitely starting to show its age. Luckily, Bethesda confirmed that they’ll be switching from Gamebryo to a new internal engine via Twitter.

“It’s a new graphics/gameplay engine built internally,” Bethesda Community Manager Nick Breckon said, when asked if TESV would use Gamebryo. “We’ll have more details down the road.”

This internally built technology could potentially refer to id Software’s Tech 5 engine, now appropriated for any ZeniMax owned project since their acquisition of the company in 2009.

NEVERMIND. Fellow IG staffer Billy Shibley was on point by noting that Bethesda Game Director already stated that Elder Scrolls V would not be using id Tech 5 at all. I still smugly assert that my analysis below was correct, even though I was ignorant of that fact.

Original rest of story: However, that’s unlikely as development on Elder Scrolls V started well before ZeniMax acquired id, and thus gained access to their engine. Switching engines mid-development is a good way to delay your game three to four years (as seen with Duke Nukem Forever).